Karl Beck (singer)

Karl Beck ( 1814 in Vienna - March 4, 1879 there ) was an Austrian opera singer ( tenor ).

Life

Karl Beck was a confectioner's assistant and was "discovered" by Johann August Stöger . He enjoyed his training with Staudigl and was not yet fully ready for the stage. In 1838 he appeared as "Arnold" in the "Jüdin" in Prague. The young singer's magnificent voice caused a sensation and established his popularity. But musical education remained primitive. Even so, its reputation grew day by day.

Then an agent of the Petersburg Imperial Opera heard him sing and abducted him to the city of the tsars without any formalities. Beck also caused a sensation on the Neva, but a sad fate overtook him early on. He caught a cold on the ice and contracted a severe throat disease that badly affected his beautiful voice.

From 1848 to 1855 he was a member of the Weimar court theater, but his singing did not achieve the earlier successes for a long time. There he was one of the followers of the Wagner cult and even sang " Lohengrin " under Franz Liszt's direction on August 28, 1850 at the first performance of this opera on the German stage.

After his engagement in Weimar he tried to admire the ruins of his tenor on the occasion of a guest performance in Prague, then he left the stage entirely.

The former “King of the Tenors”, as they called him in Petersburg, took part in several commercial ventures after the loss of his body, even working as a restaurant and café owner, without being successful anywhere.

literature

• Ludwig Eisenberg : Karl Beck . In: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century. Paul List, Leipzig 1903, p. 70 ( daten.digitale-sammlungen.de ).
• Beck Karl. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1957, p. 61.

This article is based on a public domain text from Ludwig Eisenberg's Large Biographical Lexicon of the German Stage in the 19th Century , 1903 edition.

Please only remove this note if you have revised the article to such an extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic, this has been proven and it meets today's linguistic requirements.